Help babies with serious heart conditions

Happy World Heart Day!

Every year, on the 29th September, we celebrate World Heart Day. It's a global movement to raise awareness of heart disease and, for Tiny Tickers, an opportunity to spread awareness of congenital heart disease (CHD).
 
We also see World Heart Day as a benchmark, to reflect on what we have achieved over the past year.

Since last World Heart Day we have:

 Trained 532 sonographers, giving them the skills and confidence to detect heart defects during pregnancy scans (we've trained 2142 sonographers in total since 2016).
 Placed 163 life-saving pulse oximetry machines, which can detect heart defects in newborn babies, in maternity units across the UK. This brings the total amount of machines we've placed since 2017 to 408.
 Hosted 10 virtual support groups and 13 drop-in sessions, helping 59 heart parents needing support during their journey - from their baby's CHD diagnosis, to open heart surgery and beyond.
 Reached 146,456 new people with our Think HEART message - the five key signs that a baby may have an undiagnosed heart condition.

We couldn't do any of this without your support.

Thank you for helping us keep tiny hearts beating.

Links:

• Find out more about our work

Thanks to a partnership with Children's Heart Surgery Fund (CHSF), last month sonographers at Leeds General Infirmary received our vital training to help them detect the signs of serious heart conditions in babies at the 20-week pregnancy scans.

With the support of CHSF, and your very generous donationns, Tiny Tickers is delivering hands-on, hospital-based cardiac screening training for sonographers throughout the Yorkshire region. The training covers the most up-to-date NHS recommendations on what sonographers should look for when examining the heart as part of the 20-week scan.

Tiny Tickers CEO, Jon Arnold, is also a heart parent as his daughter, Zoe, received life-saving open heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary. He says, “Early detection of congenital heart disease (CHD) can help save lives and we’re very proud of the part we’ve played in helping make sure more babies than ever before are being detected prior to birth. ”

Zoe was born 14 years ago with a congenital heart defect. Zoe’s heart condition was picked up at Jon’s wife, Andrea’s, 20-week pregnancy scan at Leeds General Infirmary. Jon says, “Zoe was diagnosed with a complete atrioventricular septal defect – a big hole in the middle of all four chambers of the heart, and one valve where there should be two. We also learned at the scan that she would have Down’s Syndrome. She is Daddy’s little princess. A very precious little princess.”

Jon continues, “Early detection of congenital heart defects in babies greatly improves their chances of survival – and this is where Tiny Tickers comes in. We’re dedicated to helping sonographers do the very difficult job of detecting heart defects during the 20-week scan and we’re delighted that CHSF are supporting us in our aims.”

A baby is born with a serious heart condition every two hours in the UK and CHD is one of the biggest killers of infants in the UK. Around half of congenital heart defects are picked up during routine antenatal scanning, but approximately 1,000 newborn babies leave hospital each year with their heart defect undetected. These babies are at serious risk of heart failure and death if their condition is not diagnosed in time.

Links:

• Sonographer Training at Leeds General Infirmary
• Find out more about Tiny Tickers
• Follow us on Twitter